Background

• Since the late 90s, the Government of India and various State Governments have issued in excess of 600 Citizen Charters (CCs) for their respective public agencies and departments.
• PAC with support from Partnership for Transparency Fund, Washington DC, is carrying out a systematic and independent review of these charters with a view to assessing their progress and performance.
• Phase I comprised of two levels of desk reviews. After an initial desk review of more than 550 charters based on their availability (through websites or received after communicating with the state Chief Secretaries), 202 CCs were further reviewed in a more detailed manner.
• Phase II included field-testing of 80 charters on their efficacy through structured interviews with users and officials.

Outcome

• Data collected from the field has been analysed and, having incorporated comments from various stakeholders, the final report has now been published and can be found at:

  http://www.pacindia.org/publications/CC_ADecadeOfExperience.pdf